The bill amends RCW 59.18.063 to require landlords to accept a tenant’s personal check, cashier’s check, or money order for any rent payment, with a limited exception that a landlord need not accept a tenant’s personal check if the tenant had a personal check returned for nonsufficient funds or account closure within the previous nine months. It requires landlords to allow tenants to submit rent payments by mail unless the landlord provides an accessible on‑site payment location. Landlords may refuse cash but must provide a receipt when they accept cash, must provide a written receipt upon tenant request for noncash payments, and must continue to make available payment methods agreed to in the rental agreement and methods previously accepted during the tenancy, subject to the section’s provisions. The bill also adds a new section to chapter 59.18 RCW establishing that, except by written agreement, any partial payment of past‑due rent does not reinstate a lease and is not grounds for dismissal of a pending unlawful detainer action. The new section further states that a partial payment made in an unlawful detainer action does not alter, amend, or extend the five‑court‑day deadline for full payment under RCW 59.18.410, preserving that deadline. Affected parties identified in the text include landlords, tenants, and courts handling unlawful detainer actions. The bill was read first time in the Senate on 01/14/26. The provided text does not specify the exact citation number for the new section added to chapter 59.18 RCW, does not include the text of RCW 59.18.410, and the bill title references issuance of a writ of restitution even though no provisions about writs of restitution appear in the extracted text.

If enacted, tenants would have clearer, enforceable access to pay rent by personal check, cashier’s check, or money order, and by mail unless the landlord provides an accessible on-site payment location. Landlords could still refuse cash and refuse a tenant’s personal checks for up to nine months after a bounced or closed-account check, but they would have to give receipts on request for non-cash payments and for any cash they accept. That shifts minor administrative duties and recordkeeping onto landlords and limits their ability to impose narrow payment methods; tenants gain more predictable, low-cost ways to make rent. For past-due rent, accepting a partial payment would no longer stop an eviction process or restart a lease, and partial payments would not extend the existing five-court-day deadline for full payment under RCW 59.18.410. That reduces a tenant’s ability to use a partial payment to defeat an unlawful detainer action and lowers the legal risk for landlords seeking timely evictions, while courts will treat partial payments as not altering the statutory deadline. The bill text omits the new section’s citation number and the full language of RCW 59.18.410, and while the bill title mentions writs of restitution, no related provisions appear in the provided extract, so some implementation details remain unclear.